Great thread topic.
Well, one needs to keep in mind that Vince is not a Self-Made Multi-Millionaire. It is highly, highly questionable if Vince would be where he is at today, without his Father. His father had all the groundwork laid. Vince Sr. sold his company to his son, probably for pennies. It is funny how whenever Vince tells this story, he never states how much he gave his father for the company, which leads me to believe it was next to nothing. I've actually heard stories that Vince was simply given the company on the condition that he "make a profit with it".
So in doing so, he has all of his father's contacts with wrestlers and other promoters around the country. All of that was setup for him.
What Vince did is took a company that his father had established, and took it to the National Level. That will always be Vince McMahon's biggest accomplishment, and it happened over 35 years ago. Vince also, deserves credit for the Rock and Wrestling Connection, which transformed wrestling into an Entertainment Medium, through associating it with pop culture.
As far as Hulk Hogan, Vince has made the claim that he "could have picked anyone to play Hulk Hogan". I'm not really so sure that's true. Sure, Vince gave Hogan a platform and the chance to succeed. But I think Terry Bollea played the character so well, that this is the real reason behind the success of Hogan. If what Vince said was true, and he could have picked anyone to play Hulk Hogan, then why wasn't Lex Luger successful? That is essentially what Luger was, was Hulk Hogan Version 2.0, and Vince tried to push him to the moon. However, the fans rejected him.
Fans also weren't as big on the Ultimate Warrior, who was another Marquee draw after Hogan dropped the title to him. Vince tried to push the Warrior to the Moon, as well ... but the fans did not respond to him with as much enthusiasm as Hulk Hogan, when Hogan was champion.
Vince was the orchestrator of the WBF. Absolute failure.
Then, the wrestling business received a lot of Negative attention for Steroid Use. Again, you have to fault Vince McMahon for this, as he undoubtedly turned a blind eye to all of it, if not encouraged the use of them. He tried The New Generation with Bret Hart and Diesel at the healm, which was nowhere near as successful as the Hogan Era.
Then Nitro was formed and almost put Vince out of business. Vince had literally no idea where to take his company, and he was facing bankruptcy. So for once in his life, Vince listened to someone else .... only after he was backed into a corner. And that person was later to be known as the true Father of the Attitude Era, Vince Russo. This saved the company, and thanks to bad management on the part of WCW, they went out of business.
Bad management was also the reason ECW went out of business. However, Heyman had a much more difficult time competing, since he had nowhere near the financial resources of a Vince McMahon or an Eric Bischoff (through Turner). ECW had their talent raided by both companies, which I think was the primary reason for the downfall of that company, combined with bad management and a lack of resources.
This is the only period where Vince McMahon was truly tested.
He was the creator of the XFL. The XFL was a failure.
He designed WWE New York. That was a failure.
He created WWE Films. That is regarded as a laughingstock and basically brings in pennies. 12 Rounds was a complete flop. The Condemned was a complete flop. The others did poorly, and whatever profits were made were eroded by The Condemned.
Since the Attitude Era and the departures of Steve Austin and The Rock, Vince has struggled to keep fans. He's been consistently losing fans since that time. So he switched gears after the Post Attitude Era with his programming content, and tried a new strategy with the PG Era. Basically, he targets his programming to nobody. It isn't targeted to adults. It isn't targeted to kids. It just isn't really targeted towards anybody. And he's done this through eliminating storylines, gimmicks, concentrating on purely the action inside the ring, getting the commentators to act like they are real sports announcers, taken away the sexuality from the Divas, removed the ringside managers, etc.
What has been the result? He's still losing more fans than he is gaining them. And the only reason he is surviving is by raising prices on his most loyal customers-- that being his base, thus testing their threshold and patience. And even that base is being chipped away today.
The Mr. McMahon character, which has been around since 1998 has gotten absolutely dull and stale. With some very slight variations in the character, this has been the same character we've seen on TV for over 11 years.
His faces aren't funny anymore.
The "Youuuuuuuuuuu're Fiiiiiiiiired!" line isn't funny anymore.
He, like older wrestlers, is simply living off his past reputation.
So I definitely think Vince McMahon is highly, highly over-rated by a lot of fans in this business. I hear people call him a genius. He isn't. And to his credit, he admits that he isn't a genius. He deserves credit for taking his father's company that he essentially inherited, and taking it National. He made a good decision to tap into the Entertainment World which helped promote the first Wrestlemania. He got lucky when Terry Bollea came along and should be thanking his lucky stars that Bollea pulled off the character with such perfection. And he should be credited simply for listening to Vince Russo's ideas (again, whose ideas were not those of Vince McMahon) when his back was against the wall and facing bankruptcy. Those are the main things Vince deserves credit for.
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